Trophic Interactions
- Plant-herbivore-predator-detritivore multi-trophic interactions: How
do above-ground grazing food webs and below-ground detritus food webs
interact and feed back to each other?
- Mechanisms underlying diet compositions of consumers: What are the
roles of resource availability, resource attractiveness and preference,
energy and nutritional requirement, foraging behavior and hunting mode,
immediate and potential predation risk, and developmental stage in
determining dietary patterns?
- Plant-herbivore arms race: Can morphological, physiological,
physical, and chemical trait matching between plants and herbivores
predict herbivory?
- The role of consumptive vs. non-consumptive predator effects on prey
population dynamics: What are the relative strengthes of density-,
physiology-, and behavior-mediated trophic interactions?
- Intraguild predation, omnivory, and cannibalism: What are their
patterns among different types of ecosystems and their impacts on food
web dynamics?